It may have been cloudy across the South East today but people living locally to me may have thought the sun came out this evening.  In reality, that was the golden glow from my halo which is currently shining so brightly, it could be considered to be almost blinding.  Yes, I have been quite angelic with regards to my health today.

Healthy eating – tick
Nutrient dense and low calorie eating – tick
Exercise – tick
Time taken to relax – tick

I naturally wake up early every day and feel I should be up and doing things immediately.  I always seem to be busy, rushing around, completing chores but to help me get over my recent feelings of intolerable stress, I decided to have a lie in today – first time in months.  I lay in bed, enjoying a scented candle, reading.  And then watching some You Tube clips with Harvey that he wanted to show me.  After a relaxing bath I came down to get breakfast.  It was only 9:30 but I actually felt guilty for so much lazing around!

I picked two enormous plants; one beetroot and one cabbage.  I put the dismembered hose head in the picture for scale – these plants are massive.  Both have bolted and are flowering.  I picked them to use the leaves to make a green juice.

After a lot of washing and cutting away bit I didn’t fancy, I had a large pile of fresh picked leaves ready for juicing. I thought they would go well with celery, kiwi and a pear. It made enough green juice to have a glass for breakfast and another mid-morning.  Not bad, this little mix. For lunch I wanted to make a big salad.  I made another salad dressing, using the recipe I previously blogged about here.  I have run out of olive oil so I used a third of a cup each of flax oil, avocado oil and sesame oil.  Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly. It came out darker than before because the avocado oil is dark green.  Tastes good ! To make my salad I first picked some lettuce, beetroot leaves and spinach from the garden.  This is the first lettuce I have picked all year. I then assembled my other ingredients and a very large bowl to put it all in. In to my huge bowl went sugar snap peas, red pepper and radishes. Followed by red onion, tomatoes and olives. I spiralled some courgette and carrots. Which were added to the chopped vegetables and green leaves. I tossed it all in a generous slug of the salad dressing and topped it with some raisins and pumpkin seeds.  I just had a bowlful of this.  The others had the same salad but with some tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise.  I thought that after the meat I had eaten in the previous 2 days, the pumpkin seeds were sufficient protein for me today.  This was a very tasty salad with a lovely variety of tastes, colours and textures.  It kept me going until late afternoon when I snacked on a banana and about 10 cashew nuts.Due to a busy social life this week I did not cook as much as I intended so I had quite a few vegetables left over in the fridge to use up.  I decided to make a soup for supper.

Gorgeous Green Soup

Ingredients (makes 2 huge portions but could easily serve 4)

• 1 tbsp butter (or other oil)
• 1 brown onion, peeled and chopped
• 2 leeks, chopped
• 1 packet of green beans, topped, tailed and cut in half
• 1 head of broccoli, chopped
• The chunky ends of a bunch of asparagus
• 2 large handfuls of kale
• 1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
• 1.5 litres vegetable stock

Method

1. Melt the butter gently in a large saucepan with a lid
2. Add the onion and fry gently for 2-3 minutes
3. Add all the remaining ingredients and fry gently for 10 minutes
4. Add the stock and bring to a simmer
5. Blitz to a smooth puree
6. Serve and enjoy

I had some asparagus on the side as I was making it for the others (to go with the venison casserole I took out of the freezer).This soup was really delicious.  Lara thought it was as good as any from Covent Garden (which she really likes so that was praise indeed).  I had nothing else with it.  No bread, croutons or crackers.  Just a very large bowl of gorgeous green soup with some asparagus.  I am looking forward to the next bowl tomorrow.

For exercise today we went in to Bedgebury Forest again and rode further than before.  We cycled round for about 1.5 hours so had a good amount of very hilly exercise!

We went in to one of the “Red” cycle tracks which means they are difficult.  This one was called Sweetness. It was challenging and certainly got my pulse racing. The photo doesn’t do it justice but this part of the track was down then up a very steep hill.  I confess I wimped out and walked down! Twice!  Twice because when we got to the end we had all enjoyed it so much we went round in a big loop and did it again 🙂  It is a beautiful forest to have on your doorstep and I really enjoyed being in it today. It is great to have an activity we can all enjoy. Until next time Alpacas.

I may not need my new meditation CD to get me to sleep tonight 🙂